Toronto Rock 2018 Season Thread

I just don't see the extra gear the Rock will need in spring when everyone's gunning for the top.

I do agree the Rock can make the final as soon as this season and they have a good shot at the division title. I hope I'm wrong about their chances in that final, should they make it that far -- I'd much rather see the optimists have their day. The players will decide.

the east kind of looks wide open...Georgia, Rochester, Buffalo and Toronto have basically alternated between looking like dogshtt, like worldbeaters, or like kinda OK.

i left NE out because have only seen one complete game of theirs and it was the one where Toronto throttled them. Mixed results there too, so, yeah, anyone can beat anyone, two or three games over .500 might take the division.

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It's still anyone's division in the East. Just when you think Rochester is dropping out of the race, they scratch Dan Dawson and smack the Rush. And just when you think Buffalo is skidding, they run off 3 straight wins.

It may come down to the teams that heat up into the stretch run in April. Don't forget that last year, 3 9-9 teams and 1 8-10 team made it in to the playoffs.

The Toronto Rock finished the first half of its 2018 campaign with a 5-4 record and given its performance to date, that seems just right.

The Rock was a feast-or-famine team the first nine games and will be looking for a little more consistency when it begins the back nine of its season on Saturday at the Air Canada Centre against the Georgia Swarm (7 p.m.).

Sometimes the parts worked well, as they did in a four-game win streak. The offence clicked, the defence in front of goaltender Nick Rose was solid. And the transition game was able to contribute as well. But early in the season and again lately, Toronto hasn’t been as sharp.

“We’ve got to strive for some consistency,” Rock head coach Matt Sawyer said. “We’ve got to go on a bit of a run where we’re consistently getting those efforts in all areas for multiple weeks.”

“When we play well we can beat anybody but when we haven’t shown up or taken things for granted, we can be beaten by anyone. We feel we have gotten better since our slow start but there’s definitely room for improvement.”

The National Lacrosse League’s two divisions could not look any more different. In the west, the Saskatchewan Rush has clinched a playoff berth and are already on its way to finishing first. The Vancouver Stealth probably won’t get out of last while the Colorado Mammoth is on its way to hosting a first-round game against the Calgary Roughnecks.

In the east, only 1½ games separate the first place Buffalo Bandits (6-4) and the last-place Swarm (4-5). Nothing will likely be finalized until late April.

“We sit in a good spot,” Sawyer said. “Everybody is going to play each other down the stretch so it will come down to who is good in a head-to-head matchups.”

“Our next three games are against the eastern division so we have a big job ahead of us.”

That test starts with the second consecutive meeting between the Rock and the defending NLL champions. The teams played in Dulmauth, Ga., on Feb. 17 with the Swarm winning 14-13 in overtime. The game started in unusual fashion, with the Rock grabbing an early 5-0 lead only to see that lead evaporate just as quickly as it was built.

“We started strong and they had their pushback,” Rock head coach Matt Sawyer said. “We would have liked to have stretched that out a bit. It’s disappointing we didn’t make it a little bit tougher for them.”

Adam Jones still leads the Rock with 59 points while Rob Hellyer has 51. But the team’s secondary scoring has looked better, making up for the absence of the injured Tom Schreiber. A bright spot on defence this season has been Brad Kri, who has 70 loose balls, trailing captain Brodie Merrill by just two for the team lead, and has won 54 percent of his faceoffs as the main guy in the circle.

Shayne Jackson has 45 points so far for the Swarm while 2017 league MVP Lyle Thompson has 40.

Someone has to get hot at some point. Have to be better than .500 against divisional opponents the rest of the way to have any chance at playoffs.

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Part of me hopes the Rock miss the playoffs for two reasons. One, I'm almost sure the O will disappear -- I've zero desire to watch another scoring drought eliminate them. Two, it might be an incentive to shake up team leadership.

On the other hand, this remains a talented squad and with parity in the league there's still a chance of a deep playoff run. And if the Rock do manage to miss the playoffs, my guess is that Manning gets a pass because Schrieber was injured and because Hickey's around to get scapegoated. Why wish an early exit on the Rock if there's no guarantee the loss would force a change in leadership?

It's not so much the cameramen, but, the director........fuctkstick keeps switching the camera angle to any of two or three sub-obtimal ones that are reversed, and, usually zoomed in too tight to even tell what is really going on. Fuctking annoying to have the ball carrier change direction on the screen when he never actually changed direction, and, you cannot even see what he is running into, or who he could pass to.

The centre floor cameraman also has to learn to just zoom out a touch, and focus on the centre of the attack zone......following the ball around is just dumb - adds jitter without any improvement in viewer experience.

Other than that, the announcers are morons and the stadium rock sucks. I have them turned down, and am just blasting an old school rock playlist on the other computer

First time since the four game streak of serious overachievement that they have had 10 goals this early.

It likely won't be enough if they have a typical last 20 minutes, but, it's been kind of nice to watch. Lefties really clicking, guys getting to the net, guys recovering rebounds for second chances.....